A1.2.4 How To Find NZers And Information About NZ: In The Wild...
Description
This article is from the New Zealand FAQ, by Phil Stuart-Jones and Lin Nah with numerous contributions by others.
A1.2.4 How To Find NZers And Information About NZ: In The Wild...
From: aph502@leonard.anu.edu.au (Aidan Philip Heerdegen)
>We wear shorts to work in Summer
And winter - most important.
>We end many of our words with an 'o', 'aye' or 'mate'
Australianism .. mate.
No shit. I came here and found EVERYONE is 'mate'. Quite off putting.
You also have a 'servo' (Service Station), bottleo (Bottle Store), fisho
(Fish Shop) etc etc. Much more Australian than NZ(ish) IMO.
>for instance 'Hey mate, what the bloody hell do yuh think your doing with
>Davo's pint aye?'
I think I am more likely to say "Hey pal/fella, what the f*ck do you think
you're doin' with my mate Dave's pint!?"
I think NZers reserve Mate for mates, rather than just any Joe Bloggs.
>We use awesome in replacement of 'Great, excellent, fantastic, remarkable
>interesting, wonderful, stimulating and choice'
I thought choice was pretty popular.
>We take 50 photo's of ourselves in front of Big Ben to send to all the
>relo's back home.
Rellies where I come from. You been hanging out with the Aussies in Earl's
Court too long.
>We call Australians - wallabies, English - POMS and Dennis Connor a 'bit
>of a bugger...' when we're with our folks, but 'bloody ozzies, winging
>poms and a personality-challenged individual' when we're with our mates :-)
I think the 'pom' and 'whinging pom' thing is extremely Ocker. They also
call them 'pommie baarstids' here. I always called them English when I was
in NZ.
-----
From: stephen@waikato.ac.nz (Stephen Judd)
Definitely. "-ies" is THE Kiwi diminutive. Rellies, vegies, pollies, etc.
-----
From: morrisp@lincoln.ac.nz (Morris, Peter)
I believe though that there is a certain innocence about NZers & Aussies
when they wander around looking at everything.
-----
From: brian_d@welly.gen.nz (Brian Dooley)
>>all the relo's back home.
>Ah, he's an Australian.
Obviously. "Relo" and "Davo" in another post were a dead giveaway.
-----
From: matoed.portsmouth.uk.ibm.com@ (Dave Matoe)
>>all the relo's back home.
>Ah, he's an Australian.
Ummm, thats 4 years of living in Melbourne filtering through. My apologies
for letting my Kiwi standards drop. :-)
I forgot a couple of others:-
We know how to sign 'Keep Cool till after Skool' for deaf people.
We laugh if anyone says 'Jeez Wayne'
We know that Annie Whittle was a singer as well as an actress (5 points if
you can remember her song)
We all wish we knew what the Dogs name is
We know who Manu is
We experience true fear when anyone says the word Weta
If anybody is interested, we did a kiwi questionnaire several years back to
spot any fakes in the crowd. Its humour at its sarcy-est and tackiest - but
humour none the less. If theres an interest for this kind of thing I'd be
happy to post it. [this is lurking in Section C1.1]
-----
From: nrowe@gwdu19.gwdg.de (Nicola Rowe )
I spoke to someone once in Germany who had a Macpac, thinking they might be
a NZer; they weren't, and, once I started investigating the backpack
situation, I found that higher-priced camping shops often sell Macpacs - at
almost double NZ prices.
-----
From: Jochen Siegenthaler <jochen.siegenthaler@alcatel.ch>
Indeed, here in CH you can buy Kiwi MacPacs at hiking stores. The locals
regard them as being of very high quality and are thus prepared to pay
extra for them (great for NZ economy)
-----
From: andrew.wicken@stonebow.otago.ac.nz (Andrew Wicken)
BTW, I'm not sure if anyone's mentioned this but Aussies and NZers are
about the only caucasians in Britain who don't have a skin tone reminiscent
of dead fish. I'll always remember when my Yorkshire grandad came over to
visit and nearly blinded us when he rolled up his trouser legs one sunny
day. Lucky the US Defence Dept didn't know about Brits when they were
trying to get SDI running.
-----
So now you know.
Continue to:
My Books
